This is a special Thanksgiving for my husband and myself….and our son, Christopher Duncan.  He is leaving for the Navy Dec. 8th, and we have to stuff in Christmas before he leaves.

These changes will be enormous.  For his parents, and especially for our son.  He was homeschooled and basically held to the Quaker mold from very early on.  His enlistment into the Navy was quite a shock for us, but he seems to have a plan.  Bill Penrose has shared some of his own son’s history in both Navy and Army and thinks that this is a good course for our son.  I trust Bill in many things, and because he has raised his own two sons well and they are fine men.  I am leaning on Bill here.

So this last Thanksgiving is heavy with our concern, not the least because there is a war going on.  And our son at just 22 seems hardly military material.  He is a thoughtful and gentle young man, who brings home stray kittens and dogs.  He is a computer geek and between classes, is making a pile of money fixing computers.  I wish he would continue his classes but he feels he needs more than what his college is offering.  I can remember the same restlessness at his age.  I solved it with marriage.  For a while.

He took some pictures of our Thanksgiving and I thought they were beautiful.  He is very handy with a camera where I am not.

The day was beautiful; a perfect late fall day where  the temperatures reflected the winter to come, the wind kicked up and clouds scuttled by, white clouds early then tinted a rosy hue as the dusk fell.  After eating I laid on a sofa and watched the wind whip around our huge pecans and live oaks.  There still are leaves on these trees, and in the distance I could see the colorful hues of maples and sycamores.  The trees outside my windows facing north were really dancing up a storm; apparently a cold front was coming in.

The blessings of our small family here, this last Thanksgiving before our only child goes into the Navy, well, we are counting them.  We are fortunate to have our child with us.  Many families this Thanksgiving don’t have their young soldiers  with them to enjoy the blessings of this wonderful national holiday.

The new kittens, Ali and Baba.

The Table

Candle fireplace

The Feast

The Pumpkin Pie from a Live Pumpkin

Yesterday’s mix of butchering a pumpkin left o’vr from Halloween, ONE glass of eggnog (well spiked) and chickens  actually turned out a good pumpkin pie.

I am posting a recipe, probably too late for most cooks I know, but I learned something along the way.  One, that Libby’s canned pumpkin ISN’T pumpkin at all…it’s  butternut squash.  Who knew?

But I had this lovely shaped pumpkin before me and a sharp knife.  I cut it in half, lengthwise, and scooped out the seeds and the strings into a wooden bread trough because my son left the compost bucket in the compose pile.  In carrying the seeds across the kitchen, I dropped the whole mess on the freshly washed floor, so decided in my eggnog-fogged state to call in a few chickens to hoover it up.

You don’t call a few chickens in: most of the  flock crammed through the screen door, raced through the mud room and into the kitchen.  8 of 13 hens made it through the door before I slammed it, and did a good job of hoovering up the seeds and pulp, but left their own offering on my floor.

The problem was getting them out again because chickens are curious girls, and  and human food must have smelled good to them because ‘laying pellets’ with a side of whatever is in the compost bucket that day…well, this was more interesting.    Problem is that some of them wandered into the dining room looking for the silver, and I had a royal time shooing them out.

Finally, I could get back to my pumpkin and make it into something that would serve as a pie.  You cut it up into large chunks, put it into a steamer and steam the life out of it.  Cool. I did overnight, and separating the pulp from the skin was easy.

Usually a ’sweet pumpkin’ is used for a pie…about 6 inches worth of pumpkin.  It makes for a ’sweeter’ pie, but I also read you can use any pumpkin,  except for  those huge 1200 lb. monsters grown for the express purpose of seeing who can grow the largest pumpkin that year.  There is a festival in upper New York state that does so every year.  I always wondered what you do with the 1000 lb. pumpkins that lose.

But my Halloween pumpkin gave me enough pulp for two good sized pies.  Recipe below.

Take the pulp and mash or blender it well….I just mashed it up because it was very soft.  Drain it in a colander for a while because there is a lot of water in fresh pumpkin.

2 teaspoons of cinammon

grating of nutmeg

1 teaspoon of salt

1 cup of brown sugar

4 eggs

1 can of evaporated milk

2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice mix of ginger/cloves, cinammon, etc.  I didn’t have but I did have “5 spice mix” which probably had the same thing from Whole Foods.  The print was too small for me to read what was in it, but it looked like it would do.

2 tablespoons of flour

more spice to taste.

Pour into unbaked pie crust.

Bake at 400 degrees (fast oven) for 20 minutes and then reduce to 350 for an hour or when a butter knife inserted comes out clean.

Cool.  I decorated mine before baking with fresh cranberries because it looked pretty.

We already tasted a sliver each tonight, and I thought it could use a bit more sugar, but others thought it fine.

A Southern touch to pumpkin pie is to whip your cream for the topping with a dash of sherry.  Makes a wonderful difference.

Lady Nyo…and Happy Thanksgiving, with Pumpkin Pie or not.

Thanksgiving

Well, the economic times stress the vast majority of Americans, but I would think that it also would stress Canadians, Mexicans, and the rest of the world.

Though these times are rather ‘trying’….and in many cases a sense of desperation sets in….there is still much in daily life to be thankful for.  Try breathing.

I have a husband who has asthma.  I think a good breath in and a good breath released is a point to consider.

But the issue of thankfulness is broad and not just tied to the economic ‘place’ we might individually  find ourselves.

(Oh! I don’t drink much at all and a neighbor sent over his famous holiday eggnog and I had a glass!  It certainly has done it’s work.)

I am profoundly grateful.  This year I published my first book, and though it was done in a whirl of angst and trepidation, it got done. I am grateful to Bill Penrose for birthing this difficult and unexpected book.  Unexpected because it was a product of only three years writing.  There was so much in that book that I can see it now as ’scattershot’.  No central theme, just the kitchen sink of writing, and a jolly gallop it was.

I am grateful for friends who stuck close to me…..last year was what the Chinese call “fanshen”.  A turning over a new leaf.  A realization of growth and discernment.  I am grateful for a man in Montreal who was a royal pain in the ass….but because of his  existence,  I broke free of a lot of issues.  I found a freedom in depending upon myself and not tying my sweet wagon to others.  Things clarified in my life and I realized false gods need to be trampled.

I am grateful for  writer friends, Bill Penrose, Nick Nicholson, Dr. RK Singh, Rose Thorny (and yes you are…) Margie, Berowne, and many others.  They demanded more of me than I thought I had…but the human spirit is caged only by our own doubts.  Poke a hole in that and the spirit can soar.

I am grateful for my husband and especially my son,  Christopher who is leaving for the Navy, Dec. 8th.  It is not something I would wish on him, but he, at a fresh 22, is determined to strike out in life on his own.  His momma here, left with his chores, can only react like a momma, and I can’t give him enough hugs and kisses.  I am smothering him now as I wish I had before.

I am grateful to have this beautiful (restored by Husband) house over my head, and even though the kittens and cats destroy stuff, their little lives are a joy to behold.

If there is a God, he has sent us kittens.

I am grateful  my husband is still working and I know it is a toss of the dice here.

Yesterday I received a well-intentioned email from the Mennonite Church.  We aren’t Mennonites but we have attended their services over the years.  Mennonites in the South are rather in strange places.  I haven’t really figured them out yet, but I think their intentions are good.  Well meant.

However, the email asking me to fast on Thanksgiving to correct a lot of wrongs of the European settlers towards the “Indians” was rather silly to my mind.

I realize as I get older that politically correct issues are rather shortsighted.  I take question at the purpose of this:  Thanksgiving is one of the few Holidays in America  I think has little to do with religion.  At least, for me.

I think of the wonderful communion we and our neighbors have during the fall. Perhaps we see each other sparingly during the summer; it’s just too damn hot to venture outside, except to the garden to weed.

But come Autumn, and we emerge from our houses.  We stand in awe of the riotous colors of Nature, the winds that blow from the north and east and the not so gentle rains that fall.  We marvel at the fast moving clouds, storm fronts that change the landscape below. Dusk’s golden glow upon distant trees, the falling of the sun and the hooting of owls somewhere in the trees, or perhaps it’s the mourning doves, well, we are witness to the turning of the Earth and there is again, an awe at nature’s diversity.

And an awe that we are alive to witness all this wonder.

Each fall there is an exchange of produce or labor from many neighbors on our street.  We get venison from one neighbor, who has hunted each fall for as long as I have known him.  Another family makes up a mess of cornbread and a rasher of bacon and sends it over. In the spring, this same grandmother makes poke salad and I have never tasted anything as good as her poke salad.  It’s a labor of love because you can poison folk by making it improperly.  I would eat Miss Ophelia’s poke  salad any day of the week.

Another neighbor knows I had severe stomach issues last fall and knew I subsided on beets alone for a week or so.  Yesterday he went to the farmer’s market to get beets.  He brought them up and gave me the beets….to be incorporated in our Thanksgiving meal.

There are so many blessings at this Harvest time.  Perhaps we need just to  realize how life brings them.

Perhaps we need more fingers and toes to count.  Perhaps if we look skyward, at the honking geese, the Sandhill cranes that fly almost invisible through white clouds with their black legs like dark streamers behind, their calls falling like chiding rain to us below….

Perhaps if we realize the blessings we have before and above us, we can understand how fragile life is, but how continuous our blessings flow.

Lady Nyo

Each woman had a story behind her. This one was a very young woman, now married to a much older man. He lurked in the background, anger hard in his eyes, his mouth set in a grimace. He had paid a good marriage price for his wife and she had not given him what he expected. A son was what he demanded and she had only produced one stillborn in the two years they had been married. Something was wrong with her. Perhaps the ritual he paid for with heavy coin would answer to his concerns. If not, perhaps he could ship her back to her parents and demand the bride price back.

The Sheika’s voice called out, her arms raised towards the woman, and this woman began to pace around the altar. At first her head just nodded back and forth as she slowly moved around the room. Then her body began to twitch, her arms rose upwards, jerking with her movements. Her hair was unbound, and with each violent movement of her head, it swung around in great, undulating waves.

Still the drums increased their tempo. The drummers were off in their own trances, their faces blank, their eyes unfocused. The ney player, his wooden flute dark with age and the stains of fingers, was answered with finger cymbals and an undercurrent of chants. The room seemed to pulsate within another dimension as the incense and drums took over the senses. The chants increased in strength and sweat poured down the face and breasts of the Sheika and the possessed young woman, making transparent their white cotton dresses. Dark tipped nipples and golden breasts, the sheen of skin heated to match the frenzy of all around them, they danced on, now uttering incoherent growls and high pitched exclamations. Other women sat in place and tossed their bodies back and forth and a few stood up and joined the young woman, their own bodies beginning to mimic hers. Shrieks and groans were heard from different corners of the room and still the drums increased in rhythm, exciting the senses to a fever pitch.

Suddenly the Sheikha stiffened, her eyes rolled back as the young woman passing before her collapsed at her feet.

She had caught the Zar! He had released hold of the ends of the hair of the young woman and flown into the arms of the Sheikha! He had hit her with enough force that she staggered backwards and only the support of the women behind her kept her on her two feet.

Now the Wise Woman talked in a low, unknown language. She berated, cajoled, implored and threatened the Zar. She grasped at the air and shook it violently. She brought the Zar to her breast, seemed to stroke it, this unseen matter, and then push it from her, chiding and scolding it.

For those in the room who knew about Zars, knew one never could get rid them. No, he could be appealed to, reasoned with, but who but one equal to a Zar can reason with a Demon?

A man brought forth a white cock and with a quick flash of his knife, cut its throat. With a bow he presented the dying cock to the Sheikha who began to sprinkle the warm blood about the now still woman. Again low guttural chants rose all around but the drums remained silent.

The Sheikha would threaten this Zar with her own spirits. She would threaten with her own history of wrestling with past Zars, and call upon their power for her to subdue this one.

Silently she prayed the demon before her would attend. It would be a fierce battle to the end, and onlookers watched for signs of who was winning; who was more powerful.

Ah! There always was signs of the battle within. Exhaustion threatened to overtake the Sheikha. She would have to bargain hard with this Zar. He was a powerful one; not about to give up his berth without a fight.

But, slowly, slowly….there were signs she was winning, and those who knew of these things would see renewed energy on the part of the Sheikha, a renewed passion for what she was facing. If she was coming to victory, her voice would soften, her appeals would be as to a child and perhaps this Zar would listen.

But success was never assured. These Zars were thousands of years old and wily creatures. They may be made of air and malevolence, but they were a force outside Nature.

No victory over a supernatural force could be guaranteed. It always was a battle to the end. For you never get ride of a Zar, the possessor. You only give him a good shakeup, new marching orders, and you send him back into the possessed.

No one wants a Zar running around scaring the children and chickens. And a goat for possession will not do.

The Sheikha looked down at the woman at her feet. Ah! There was a change in her face, a smoothing of her brow, a peaceful countenance. She could be restored to her husband and the Sheikha prayed that he would see his wife in a new light.

The Sheikha knew what was wrong here. It was the same old story over and over. A man, too old to give his wife the pleasure she was made for, would demand from her what he could not give. So the senses were imbalanced, the forces of love were destroyed, the woman would suffer unless….

The Sheikha’s eyes snapped to the husband and with a gesture she had him approach. She stared deep into his eyes and held them. She muttered in her strange and frightening language and still she did not drop her eyes. Then she sprinkled his white robes liberally with the cock’s blood.

She had the satisfaction of seeing the fear in his eyes.

Perhaps this time the Zar will behave. And better, perhaps so the husband, too.

*************************

Outside the walls of the souk, outside where the night wind rested, camels complained and the dung fires scented the air, where the moon looked down on the sea of sand, other Zars were gathering to float over the walls.

The food on the altar would not last long. Again Spirit would invade Flesh and the drums would call out demons into the arms of some Sheikha.

In this part of the world, the Zars were part of human destiny.

They were a part of life as much as the desert sands, the groans of camels and the dark eyes of beautiful women.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

Trance dancer, by velomar

This is a new story, the last in “The Zar Tales” to be published soon. It is an experimental piece and I have some  further work to do on it.

Posting Part 1 because it is long.

Lady Nyo

The Desert Zar

The dust settled from the desert. All day it howled and swirled around the souk, a locust plague of stinging matter, a towering and maddened djinn. Now the sky over the sands was fading pink, as daylight filtered through the violent storm resolved into a dark blue night.

The roiling sea of sand, shifting like high waves of water, was now placid. Off to the east, bells of a caravan mixed with the groans and protestations of camels, floated over heavy air. Jasmine and bougainvillea scented the night along with dung fires from Bedouin camps.

Dusk had settled in, this narrow ribbon between light and dark, bridged by a few soft breezes. The djinn of night inhaled deeply, holding the memories of the day close, then blew to the desert, to repeat each dusk into eternity.

This was Tunis, a hundred years ago, before the awnings of the souk now woven reed mats, were replaced with sheet tin, and the trampled dirt paved beyond cobble.

Somewhere a drum begin a steady beat, sounding like a heartbeat, drawn from the village core. Then the soft piping of the ney flute floated out over the souk, it’s sweetness rising like a descant over the measured beat of more drums.

Black clad shadows moved down the length of adobe walls to the center well. Bundles of jasmine, tuberoses, bougainvillea, red poppies and lavender were placed on the steps of the well, seeming to scent the still water.

An old Negress, her back twisted by life, took a few coins from women as they passed. Her hair twinkled like dull stars from the pierced coins strung from her dull dreadlocks.

This was the price of the Zar ritual.  Each woman would exorcise her demon, her hysteria or her bad luck. And with hope, perhaps a mean husband.

As more and more women came around the well, it seemed the drums became louder and the ney flute shriller. The bleating of a goat nearby could be heard.

Still black figures moved in the settling darkness down the cobbles to the well and placed their few coins in the old woman’s hand.

Around the corner and halfway down the street was a doorway. A curtain was drawn over the opening but the incense within puffed out with each opening. It scented the nighttime air, dueling with jasmine growing up walls. The shrillness of the ney increased and the drums picked up rhythm.

Go through the curtain and you enter a room heavy with smells. The incense–powerful, but there were undercurrents of tobacco from a hookah being smoked in the darkened room. There was something acrid, like the smell of fear or sweat. The raw smells of a crowded humanity perfumed the room.

Wooden benches placed far back upon the walls were already filled. Men and women, but mostly women, were sitting in the smoky fog. Most were still clad in the black chadors, but here and there were sparkles of an elaborately beaded head scarf. One woman sat like a princess with a camel’s saddle beneath her feet. She was dressed in embroidered robes with silver jewelry over her forehead. She was the youngest wife of the local warlord and woe be to anyone who accosted her. Black eyes, two ebony moons dulled by the poppy, looked above a face veil. The heavy sandalwood perfume coming from her robes scented the air, mingling with other scents.

In the middle of the floor a high wooden stool was placed where a large tray of sweets and fruits were offered to the spirits of the night. No mortal hand or mouth would partake of such offerings.

The drums beat varying rhythms, and all combined into a gigantic heartbeat, or perhaps many heartbeats reflecting those within the room.

Suddenly a woman appeared and walked around the altar, muttering something in a sing-song voice. Her hair unbound and tossed with the rotations of her head, she nodded back and forth in time with her pacing. As she walked and muttered, her eyes rolled back in her head. She was deep in trance.

The Sheika! The power of a demon catcher, the handler of the Zar demons! The Wise Woman, for who but such could demand anything of the invisible and dangerous Zar?

She paced the room, muttering to herself, her body now expressing violent movements. Off to the side was a younger woman sitting on her haunches, covered with a white cloth. With the shrill call of the wooden ney, the woman was helped to her feet, uncovered, where she stood with bowed head.

She was the possessed. Perhaps her husband had brought her to the ritual. Perhaps she could be healed.

But perhaps the Zar that possessed her could overcome all the magic of the Sheikha and possess her!

End of Part 1

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

I swore I wasn’t going to do this.  In fact, I wrote and later deleted some entries on the Atlanta Mayoral campaign. I also wrote about Mary Norwood, one of the candidates.

But!….This campaign has raised so many issues here in Atlanta.  And as an Atlantan….I will use my blog to express my opinions.  It’s a good way to work out some of the issues.

I’ll be plain here.  Atlanta is multi-cultural city of Black, White, Hispanic, Asian and other other cultures.  Unfortunately during this election we only have heard from Blacks and Whites, the two biggest demographics.  This pisses me off because it deletes the voting power and concern for this city we all share.

Atlanta has had a Black Mayor for the past 36 years. This was an historic event 36 years ago, the first Black Mayor (Maynard Jackson) ever for Atlanta.  However, what sprung up around him was….for lack of a better term….a Black Elite that funneled the issues of contracts and power into a class of their own.

This happens I would believe in any city.  However, corruption ensued and it has been 36 years of squandered opportunities, fiscal issues and unending embarrassment for the majority of Atlantans.

Eight years ago the last mayor, Bill Campbell went to prison, indicted for 12 counts by the feds.  He was an arrogant bastard and funneled contracts and money to his friends.  It was something that the feds took their own sweet time to do something definite.

For the past eight years we have had Shirley Franklin, part of the machine of Jackson…as have all the previous mayors been.  Now there is a question of a ‘missing’  $140 million dollars.  It’s amazing that in this day the accounting of money can get so screwed.

So here comes Mary Norwood.  She is a white City Council member of eight years standing.  She lives in a ‘good’ part of Atlanta called Buckhead.  She is running against Kasim Reed, a lawyer and a former Atlanta Senate member.

I’ll cut to the chase.  Mary Norwood has been attacked by the Black Elite and many of their supporters as a ‘old white bitch’, a “Buckhead Betty”, just about everything that can be said in a derogatory way…but the main attacks are on her race and her serving on the City Council for the past 8 years.

(Mary was the ‘go to girl’ when a community, mostly black, had a problem.  She was an ‘at large’ council member and was amazingly responsive.  I know, because I have known her for about 10 years.  Way before she decided to run for mayor.  She was who you contacted because your own council member was MIA or non responsive.  And she really served in the full spirit of a council member….not like those who napped or played games on their phones.  We got the video of all that!)

The opening salvo of this was a memo put out to Black Atlantans (yeah, leaked….) saying that “Atlanta would only be served by a Black Mayor, and that the African-American community needed to rally around a Black candidate.”

Now, I have a problem with this.  A big problem. The racism of this is obvious, and IF this was turned around and the plea was to Whites to ‘rally around a WHITE candidate because the interests of the White community would only be served by this’….well, you can see the racism there.

Seems to be two standards in Atlanta today.  And this isn’t right.

Supporters of Mary Norwood are being attacked racially on blogs, campaign signs have been taken by Reed supporters (and stacks of them have been found at Reed’s headquarters in the back of his staffer’s SUV) , and there is a climate of extremism and intimidation right now in Atlanta.

People have a right and a duty to vote for whomever they please.  But right now there is a nasty ‘mob-rule’ in this campaign.  The Reed camp has some issues that they are bucking: like an ethical cloud over Reed’s head as a lawyer (that is well documented here in Atlanta and I won’t go into it here.  You can google these issues if interested) and some other rather disturbing issues of personal conduct.

Reed is the continuation of the Black Elite.  Same old same old for the gravy train for a small minority of citizens.

Mary Norwood represents some radical change for Atlanta.  And this is a painful issue for many.  We have a city that is fraunt with crime, corruption, more crime and extreme infrastructure issues.  Incompetency in the City Hall and Water department. Property tax issues that have been raised 42% this year.  A Police Chief that was hired by the Franklin administration out of New Orleans…yeah right.  He’s MIA and has been for months.  He’s just waiting for January when he can skip town.

We need a radical rupture with the issues of business as usual in Atlanta.

This used to be promoted as “A City Too Busy For Hate”.

Wish that ever was so.

Lady Nyo

This Full Moon, photo by David Halworth

This glowing orb,

a speckled beacon

of a late spring night,

hiding behind fresh greenery

as it rises gracefully,

imperceptibly,

inching closer

to the apex of the universe

like a pickpocket who

moves with oiled gears

towards a destination–

the usual pocket of gleaming coins.

Or like Casanova,

lighting up the room

with Venetian charm,

His throat and wrists

garnished with golden lace,

a tall gondola gliding

over dark waters seeking a woman’s heart,

a smooth, well-acted routine,

but nonetheless,

Enchanting, predictable,

Great expectations never ending.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, June, 2009

Our son’s birthday was yesterday.  He was 22.  My husband, all on his own, planned a gala event for him, and told me only a few days, maybe 4 , before.  LOL!

I had my doubts that he would pull this off because of his plans: fully one half of the event was a going away party for son because he has enlisted into the Navy and leaves for ‘boot camp’ in the Great Lakes region somewhere on Dec. 8th.

This is very hard for momma.  Our only child, and he’s in college.  This was quite a shock when he informed us what he did (enlist) and I thought things somehow would change and he wouldn’t go, but they didn’t.  We are proud of his maturity in wanting to do this, but of course, apprehensive.  There’s a matter of this damn war.

My husband had plans for a bakery to do a cake in the form of a battleship…or aircraft carrier, and two days before the party, they backed out.  Our local grocery store did a “Harry Potter” cake….and though I wasn’t involved, I wondered at this.  However, it was a good cake! I don’t know what was the filling between layers, but it was good.  For an hour I scoured a party store the other day for something nautical for a center piece, and only found some gummie bear-looking soft plastic sea creatures….something too small for the “3 and up” crowd, but the 50 and over bunch made some obscene tableaus with these creatures on our table.  I am pleased to say that all of our son’s friends didn’t do what the ‘adults’ did with these pieces.  Sheez.

The venue was a new place….open about 4 months in SW Atlanta, called “Space Atlanta”.  It was huge, but the front area we had was small enough so 40 people wouldn’t get lost.  My husband had decorated it with balloons, ribbons tied to the back of chairs, ‘birthday’ table cloths and flowers.  The food catered by Space Atlanta was great and husband ran a tab. Jesus Christ! My friends can drink!

Our neighbors, a lot of my husband’s co-workers came (our son had worked in our husband’s place a few years ago for one month but got fired because his hair was too long. LOL!) my belly dancing students came and other friends.  But the best thing was our son’s friends turned out in force (well, 10 young men is force to me) and they were delightful.

When young men…from 18 to 23 are not corrupted by adult life….have mostly stable homes of some sort, have a supportive community of either college, neighbors or family…well, they are a delight to see.  They were big, hulking, young men for the most part, with shaved heads or dreadlocks….and if I didn’t know most of them, they would be pretty scary if you met them on the street at night.  But they weren’t of that nature or character.  They were sweet with the bloom of youth and good young men.  I was glad that my sometimes snarly son had such a cadre of friends.

A couple of months ago, we celebrated our first Shabbat.  A Friday Jewish dinner….and  a couple were guests at this.  They were black kids, close friends of our son, and this was the first cultural event  they had been to outside their own religion.  We aren’t Jewish, but had been studying Judaism for a couple of months and thought we would try this lovely and spiritual event for our own family.

I think this added something to our family and our guests.  We played scrabble for an hour or so after dinner and they opened up about their own lives.  Perhaps that is part of the communication that sometimes happens in these events.  Regardless, I got a chance to listen to these young men and hear what their lives were about.  And realized that they are still….children.

I hope they don’t grow up faster and become  jaded adults, but they probably will.  I hope we can be there to give them some slack and support.  They deserve it, as does my serious son.  Oh!  and I learned a lot about said son from his companions.  Apparently he has “girl-admirers” all over campus….something we never knew.  My husband and I looked at each other and realized our son has a secret life we know nothing about.  He never talks about these things.

LOL!

A couple of men from my husband’s work had read my first book, “A Seasoning of Lust” and one of them was quite a classics scholar.  One still held on to the cd of “Lady Nyo’s Poems and Other Verse” that was supposed to be printed in Chicago this summer.  He was the project manager of some big job and a delightful man.  One friend  John Taurus, who has written for this blog before, came  and a table of us had quite a ‘non-birthday’ discussion going.

I have just finished Robert Kaplan’s “Balkan Ghosts” and since there was a Slovenian, and two Romanians there, John, myself and a few others, well….the discussion strayed to ethnic cleansing, WWII, back to Mozambique and what is happening  with the take over of the farms,  back to Romanian brutality during WWII and the Serbo-Croatian war.  And people chimed in about Afghanistan.

A few there had read Mary Renault’s fiction and I have just started her “Nature of Alexander”  about Alexander the Great and all those wars and campaigns, bad family and what passed for ’state ship’ in those times.

My friends had more extensive knowledge of Renault and her writings, and the criticisms of her books, but it doesn’t matter because she was writing literature that was head and shoulders over much of contemporary works.  Anyone who can sling Plato and Socrates and ancient Greece and Persia into an extended sentence has my admiration and attention.

The personnel of Space Atlanta were fantastic people.  Again, young men, and they couldn’t have been more gracious.  My husband apparently printed up some flyers about my first book, and a promo for the second, and gave them to the staff.  I got a lot of questions when we were leaving about publishing, writing, belly dancing, mysticism and some good ghost stories from one of them. They want to carry the books there, and that is so lovely of them.  But I felt comfortable in this venue for the books because the art work is wonderful, the place is great and I think the clientele will go for this.

Atlanta has been having a really hard and divisive time with the mayoral campaign and first round elections.  Racial issues that shouldn’t ever be part of anything have been prominent in the news, and life in general in our neighborhoods.  Crime has certainly been an issue.  Last night was a wonderful place of communion and friendship, between neighbors and friends, black and white, and it had to be one of the more uplifting times of recent memory.  I think the discussions of literature and history and world events fell into a very natural place amongst us.

Many thanks to the staff of Space Atlanta, 1310 White Street, SW Atlanta.  And many thanks for the thoughtfulness  and energy of my husband.

He did something hard and made it seem effortless and we all had fun.  And our son goes off to a dangerous and adult life in the Navy having the friendship of his friends and the concern of the adults around him.

It doesn’t get better than that.

Lady Nyo

Well, writing is re-writing to me…and especially now.  I’m working my way through this next book…”The Zar Tales”….a collection of stories and a novella, so I do a lot of this stuff above.

I posted a chapter recently, but I am amending it now.  It’s longer…and I’ve cut off the top…enough so I am playing around with what it seems now without it.  Sometimes that’s good to do.  Cut and paste and delete words….lots of words.  Tighten up.

Sorry for the weird formatting.  I transposed it from an email to a friend and this is the way it treats me!

Lady Nyo

Book II, Chapter 1 “The Zar Tale”

Ali was sitting on the bench early one evening when the village men gathered
outside the baker’s shop. They lit the hookah and passed the hoses around.
He was enjoying the mixture of babble and smoke rising like spirits
above their heads.  Eyes half closed against the blue haze circling his head, he basked
in the fading sunlight.

There was a lot more energy needed to be a mortal, Ali thought.  Being a
Zar was easier. That Shakira was insatiable.  Now she would grab his hand
and lead him to bed, and she would stay there, full of demands and little
shame for a woman!  On top of that, she was feeding him too much and he was
getting heavier.  She told him he needed the weight, but he thought she just
was in love.  Ah! Women acted differently in love.

This was something he had forgotten over the past thousand years.  He was
adjusting to a diet of rich foods he had not tasted before.  The foods of
his Berber clan were simpler.  The woman was making flaky walnut and honey
pastries and stuffing dates with sugared almonds and tempting him with
candied ginger, orange and lemon peel.  Also, wheat salads with golden
raisins and garlic and herbs from her garden.

And he was eating too much meat.  This goat and lamb was not stringy, as he
remembered in the desert, but stuffed with lard and fat and served with
stewed apples and apricots and more delightful than even her sweetbreads.
Ah, he was going to get fat and slow!  But he had a thousand years of
nothing on his stomach, and Shakira was sure to kill him with all these rich
dishes!  Or, he supposed, her demands in bed.  One or the other was going to
shorten his life.

So, the smoke and silence this evening was a restful time for Ali.

But it wouldn’t last long.  The murmur of men made him open his eyes.
Walking towards them was Emir and Hasan.  Ah! Two old Zar friends now as
flesh and blood– thanks to mullah kabobs!

Hasan wore the indigo blue turban. There was always a kinship between them,
and if nothing but their hooked noses and the colors of their robes and
turbans showed this, well it was enough.  Emir was Persian; his robes were
white and black.  Ali stood and embraced both men, and kissed each on both
cheeks as was custom.  He introduced Hasan as a kinsman from a village in
the mountains and Emir as an old friend.  How old, Ali didn’t reveal, but
they had been Zars together for many centuries.  Ali called for more of the
strong Turkish coffee and the baker came out with the tiny cups and the long
ladled copper coffee pots.  The village men, as in all regions of Turkey,
prided themselves in their hospitality, and welcomed the two strangers.
Besides, they might bring gossip or news and that was better than reading
weeks- old newspapers dealing with city issues and rarely those from the
mountains.

Hasan and Emir were passed the piping of the hookah. They filled their lungs
with the sweet scent of dried apple tobacco.  After a while, Ali mentioned
Emir was a poet, and a wonderfully inventive one at that!  Emir beamed with
pride and delight and looked at Ali, a broad smile wreathing his sun
darkened face.

“Ah!  My Brother Ali here is a fine poet in his own right!  I cannot hold a
candle with my poor verse!  I have heard Brother Ali expound at length and
his verse is prodigious!  The angels in heaven get dizzy with the beauty of
his lyrics. They spiral almost to the ground and Allah sucks them back up
with his breath!  Ah! The Great Rumi would have treasured the verse of
Brother Ali had he but heard it!”

Ali laughed to himself.  Emir knew well Ali had been a student of the great
Rumi almost a thousand years ago.  It was not in his mortal flesh he sat as
Rumi’s student, but a time when he was condemned as a Zar,  without purpose
or a woman to possess.

When Ali was a young Berber chieftain, and still with mortal connections to
this earth, he was taken by the beauty of verse and was a very good Berber
poet.  This was unusual for his region, for the women of the tribes were
known to be the poets and the literate ones.  But Ali was a favorite amongst
the women, and they loved to have him around as a young boy, before he was
of age where he would not be welcome company with the women.  His dark eyes
shone hearing the verses the women chanted while washing at the river. He
learned how they took from the beauty of nature and the joys, sadness of
their lives and wove them into carpets of verse.  The knots and threads of
these beautiful verse-carpets were full of color and the softness of dreams,
not sheep wool.

He learned to stroke the phrases, to rise to the lushness of the Berber
language.   When he was older, he would sit on his horse in the desert and
roam the dunes until he lost himself in lyrics and sand.  His horse knew the
way home, and Ali could compose his poetry away from the chatter of wives
and children, growls of camels, the bleating of goats and the general noise
of the camp.

Ali had a hunting hawk, as had most of the Berber men, and he would put his
beautiful girl on the leather pad at his wrist, gently pull off the hood and
launch her into the desert sky.  She would wheel and soar high and turn into
the sun, and Ali would lose sight of her.  But before he did, he would
compose verses in praise of his bird.  Her wings, her grace, her sharp eyes
that saw from high on the wind.  She would fold her wings and plunge like a
daytime falling star, and stretch out her claws.  Make short work of desert
rats.

She was fast as the sandstorms that carried the wind up to the foot of the
mountains, and a fierce as any warrior on his steed.  Her coat sparkled with
a million colors, like a piece of bronze mirror, or like pearls glistening
fresh from the sea.

Ali could never stop praising his hawks.  They lifted him into the wilds of
their heaven and left his human travail behind.  Ah, his birds made his soul
soar!

Ali was as proud of his hawks as he was of his poetry. His father and most
of his kinsmen would sew shut their bird’s eyes shut and release the strong
thread before they launched them. But Ali saw many hawks blinded this way,
and what good is a blind hunting hawk?  So he patiently molded hoods of new
lambskin, sewed and decorated them with dyed feathers.

Hasan’s voice cut into his thoughts, and Ali shook his head to clear.  He
hadn’t thought about the hawks in many years, centuries actually.  Now, with
his feet again mortal, he could capture and train young tercels and hunt
again like his ancestors.  This promise brought tears to his eyes, and
opening them, saw the compassionate gazes of both Hasan and Emir.  They had
suffered as much as Ali, and now, thanks to the good mullahs, they had their
chances at life again.

“Give us a verse, Brother Ali!” said Emir, with a broad smile.

The men of the village perked up with his words, for there was nothing that
men loved more than the soft, lulling words of a poet.

Unless it was the soft moving hands of a woman.

The men had hard lives in the mountains, tilling the stony earth for their
grain crops, but they made time for any poet.  It was music to their ears
without instrumentation.  It was the fine music of human voice and colorful
words.  It gave precious beauty to their routine lives.

Ali shook his head, and said for Emir to give them a poem, but Emir insisted
Ali give them a verse of his own making.

“Ah! You ask the impossible, my dear brother.  It has been long since I
thought of any verse. Life had glued shut those pages of inspiration.”

Ali smiled to himself and took up one of the mouthpieces of the hookah,
sucking in a long plume of smoke smelling of apple.

“If marriage next month to the Sheilkha Shakira doesn’t open those pages, my
friends, then all the poets of Persia have lived for naught!”

This from one of the men in the village made them all laugh.  They were
curious how this stranger had been able to attract the affections of their
desirable Sheikha. But their eyes, even the eyes of men, could tell he was
handsome enough to attract a woman’s gaze.

Better he marry the Sheikha now.  The women would have no claim on him then.

Ali stared at Emir through half opened eyes.  They spoke volumes, were
masked by the heavy smoke he expelled from his lungs.  Ah, brother Emir
would push him, but perhaps he could think of something.  Surely the men
would want a love sonnet or a verse of the beauty of mortal life.  Make that
Paradise, for these men were jaded by their mortality.  It was new to Ali,
Emir and Hasan, and precious and confounding to them daily.  After being a
Zar for centuries, feet on the earth were heavy but strangely comforting.

*”All the carpets of Persia cannot match the softness of her hands

The roses of the Sultan’s garden have not the bloom of her cheeks

The trees blown by a gentle wind have not the sway of her delicate gait

And my heart travels with speed to lie at her feet.

Ah! She steps on my heart, invisible beneath her flowery foot,

And trots upon my senses, scrambling them like eggs for the breakfast.”*

At this last line, the men guffawed.  Even they, in their isolated village,
could discern good verse from bad. Ali was having his fun with them.

“I warned you I had nothing to say,” he said with a bemused look on his
face.

“Ah, Friend Ali!” said one of the men loudly.  “If you think you have
nothing to say now, marriage will shut up your mouth then.”

The others laughed, for the truth of the matter was so.  Marriage changed
both men and women.  It made one side more quarrelsome and the men more
silent and fearful of the wrath of the other.  Ah! Men could not win in this
battle.

Ali had been married, with a number of wives.  His eyes glazed over as he
blew out more smoke from the hookah.  The first one was Lela, when he was 20
years old.  She was young and so shy, she wouldn’t look him in the eyes for
two months after the wedding.  She cried most of the first month.  Ali was
aware she missed her family, but a marriage is a marriage and it must be
endured.  He would take his horse and his hawk and ride out and hunt.  Only
when Lela had her first child, luckily for her a boy, did she perk up.  She
became right bossy, too.  The older men would laugh when Ali made a hasty
retreat from their tent, usually followed with a string of invective from
his young wife, and sometimes wooden stirring spoons and knives.  Ah! This
was not a good situation, and his father decided Ali had suffered enough and
gave him another wife. Sela was a cousin of Lela and at first; she was as
shy as Lela.  But she soon overcame that and became a favorite wife.  There
were two more, but one died in childbirth.  All in all, Ali had four sons
and four daughters. Sela was killed in the arms of Ali, when Ali was
murdered making love to her.  Their second child died with them, for Sela
was very pregnant.

“Ah, my wife will be angry if I don’t return home soon.”

The words of one of the men cut into Ali’s thoughts.   The sun was setting,
and the sky was red from its fading luster.

“Soon, my friend”, answered another, putting his hand on the shoulder of Ali
in a compassionate gesture.   “You will be yoked like the oxen in the fields
to our Shakira and you too will watch the hours like the rest of us, knowing
they are linked to the tempers of women.  Ah Allah! You had many wives, but
we have just one each, and our lives are made miserable still!”

The laughter went around the benches where they sat in the fading sunlight.
Men all over had the same issues, and now that Ali and the others were
mortal again, they faced their own temperamental women.  Perhaps it was
easier before as Zars, for they could just float out of earshot of women and
gather in the forests in the mountains to share the hookah with other Zars.
But the good outweighed the bad, for the cooking of the women went a long
way in filling appetites that had been lost for centuries.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyright, 2009

Ok,… sounds wanky.  But I was thinking this morning about just this.

A couple of months ago I left a writers group I had been in for a few years.  It was a good classroom for learning many things about writing.  It was good.

I want to reemphasis this.  I sucked at the communal teat of this group and it formed so much in me as a writer.  I was pretty raw, didn’t know top from bottom, and things could stink in the writing.  I was clumsy.

Still am…and this blog shows it. But the blog is just a pure release and a joy because I don’t have to prove myself here.  It’s just a vehicle for thoughts and communication.

This group, over the years, helped tremendously.  It’s just that I didn’t think in straight erotica terms.  Not like so many of them.

And there are some incredibly fine writers there.  I am proud to have read their work.  The best haunt me still.

It was also addictive.  I realized  all my writing there …well, most of it…was to fit in the mold of erotica.  Fine for a while, but there is more to writing than just this genre.

I have changed in my style and taste.  Erotica is a spice now, not the full monty for me.  Perhaps it never was.  I did teeter on the issue of what was porn and what was erotica.   I found many arguments on both sides and some that said there was no difference.

I didn’t buy it. I read some pretty horrific stuff, mostly in the extreme bdsm nature…that squashed any erotic in the writing.  I read some  work that was pornographic in my estimation.  And in a many cases, I read some good erotica.

I was restless there, and thought  I was way too addicted to the approval of others about my writing.  I knew  I didn’t fit, was writing work that wasn’t of interest there, and I felt I was limiting myself in some unknown way.  So I left months ago.

Recently I went back.  Now I wonder why.   Sometimes we are better leaving and staying gone.   I think what happened is that I changed, even in a few months.  When I went  back, I realized the a lot of things had not been resolved for me.  I was right back into the mix where I didn’t really fit.  It’s not that I couldn’t learn more, it’s just that my writing had taken  some sharp turns away from erotica.  I didn’t consider myself a writer of erotica anymore, and that was what they wanted.

Further, I didn’t have the blocks, the writer’s blocks, the issues of  depression that seem to grab  many writers, I didn’t have the quirks of some writers, the rituals, the superstitions, whatever keeps writers from writing.  I was writing with no issues really.

I was just writing.  I was writing stories….novels….poems.  It seemed just the natural thing to do given the stimuli around me. It was no angst y thing really, it was just the response with pen and paper to the wonderment of life around.  Everything sparked either a blog entry (LOL!…and people who read the blog know all about that!)….or something else.  Mostly the novels I have been writing.

Ok….I will admit in some departments  my writing has fallen off…like tanka production which for three years was something I loved.  I was now writing ‘long’….and tanka has a very different state of mind for me, and it just wasn’t appearing.

I would walk last year and just that constant movement would bring tanka flooding to mind.  I had to place a pad and pen on a dog house, or chicken coop (I walk in my back yard) to write down those verses that came to me.  Nature seemed to flood my senses, and if it wasn’t tanka, it was freeverse.  (which ain’t free by the way, there were rules to freeverse, but another entry for that).

Like the lithe bowing

Of a red maple sapling

My heart turns to you,

Yearns for those nights long ago

When pale skin challenged the moon.

I write tanka in the 5/7/5/7/7 form.  That’s Japanese and I stick to it.  There are other forms, 3/2/something…but I’ve rarely seen it, and frankly, I’m not interested in it.  I find a balance and a comfort in this 5/7/etc. form.  I also find comfort and inspiration in some older Japanese themes, like the moon, nature, etc.  Works for me.

We can get lost in a crowd.  We can go along with others who are fellow travelers for a while and scratch itches we think we have.  But at some time along this journey, we have to look at what we are and what we are doing with some  company.  Not bad company, but hindering in some important ways.

Maybe some hidden ways, unknown until you have been away for a while.  Perhaps you have broken a mold of a particular time.

It’s a privilege to write.  It’s a wonderful thing to create through the cobbling of words. But we have to know our influences and whether they are progressive or hinder us in some way.  We have to be loose and goosey.  We have to honor the imagination  that is the generator of our creativity.

We have to unmoor ourselves in that sea of imagination and push out alone into the water.  We have to unhinder ourselves and in that stillness and silence, we can hear our voice.

That goes a long way to being a writer. Perhaps drawing on this leads us to the bedrock of our  originality.

Lady Nyo

With apologies for all the errors in this entry.  I wrote it too fast and didn’t proof!